Plantagenet Penguinista

There is an ancient PowerPC-based Macintosh (still working!) about 18km West of here. The chap who began using it about two decades ago has a need to access some of the CAD files on it, and to print some of those out. So I installed QEMU on an hp laptop I own (based on Lubuntu), then a PowerPC emulator module for it, Mac OS 9.2 on that (retired 17 years ago), the free CAD package, and a print-to-PDF plugin. After copying the CAD files into the emulated file space (from the internal hard-disk drive borrowed from the original Mac), they can be opened, viewed, edited and/or PDFed. The next step was to install QEMU under OS X on his MacBook Pro under OS X, and copy the virtual workspaces to it. Now the owner can edit drawings of machinery (some of it older than I am), print them out on a modern printer, and back up the entire system by copying two files. If his MacBook ever quits the game, QEMU can be installed on whatever replaces it, those two files copied into it, then away he goes aga...

Posit a human being who claims to be Christian. They might also claim to be Atheist, or Hindu, or almost anything else. To this particular individual, the most important person is their grandiose — false — self-image. Everyone else (everything else) comes secondary to that. Regardless of their claims, the belief system they follow is Virtual Idolatry. “Virtual?” Yes. There is zero tangible evidence of the physical existence of the principal object of their affection. “Idolatry?” Yes.  What they effectively worship was created by mankind (in this case, themselves, although they may have been conditioned to act that way by an authority figure early in their lives). Their actions reveal them to not follow the best-documented human in history (Christ) in any practical way, so they are evidently not Christian. That they regard themselves (by projection of that image) to be better than any other human being clashes with the basic Monism upon which Hinduism is built, so they are evident...

Person T has had Person A design a one-page flyer and sent it to Person J... as a single image. Person T is two hours ahead, time-zone wise, and Person A is roughly 12 hours behind. Person J also wishes to email out the flyer with hyperlinks on each of two names in the image. Sent as a bare image, she will not fly. Embedding the image in a PDF would allow only the entire image to possess a single hyperlink. So... crank up GIMP, open image, select the Move tool, drag Guides from each Ruler to section up the image. Each Guide changes nothing, however its presence allows the Rectangle Select tool to be very precise and consistent. Now File ⇒ Save the work-file in case you wish to adjust things for another round. Here, I have applied the Cubist tool from the Filters to most of the content, so the idea is conveyed without revealing details of said content. The next step is to Rectangle Select the top area (in the screenshot above, the left-name area has been Rectangle Select...

“What do you actually need it to do?” That one question can simplify a process so very much. The outcome as a whole can become simpler, when features which are not necessary for this to be able to do are discarded. The outcome can become cheaper, as less resources are required to perform fewer functions. The outcome can become untangled from ‘political’ factors such as who might have a vested interest in things happening a certain way, or who might expect to derive consequential benefits of various kinds. The outcome can arrive sooner, as less needs to be done — in simpler ways — with fewer dependencies — to make it happen. The final result is likely to be more flexible, as it is less burdened by specific (unnecessary) features — and so by implied limitations — than a poorly-targeted or very generalised solution. For a very simplistic result, rather than buy a new PC, this 3rd-hand desktop box over here, with this video card plugged into it, plus these two 3rd-hand...

Today, another will switch from the Borg to Kubuntu.  All that was necessary was to list the things one can do without viruses, without paying the proverbial arm-and-leg, without facing six conflicting EULAs to use one application.  Done. In less sanguine news, it became apparent that the heartless hypocrite has further isolated one of their emotional slaves.

Two for our gummint to think upon...   ...oh, and one more for a person who can do no wrong... in their own eyes, anyhow... you do actually have a possible future, one which centres on choosing to no longer be totally self-righteous, and sticking to that choice:

battery-pack contacts Canon LP-E6 battery packs (such as those using in my 70D camera) have two fine connector wires used for charging them.  These seem to be a weak point, as (if left to themselves) they eventually fail to connect well, which means that they do not charge adequately, or (in the field) do not run the equipment at all. One experimenter discovered that scrubbing them with the edge of a stiff business card helped to make with (nonCanon this time) charger contacts them good.  So I considered something more extensive. Parts: squeeze-bottle of cleaner (I use a citrus-based cleaner from PlanetArk, which seems to be able to clean almost anything off without being excessively invasive); spray-can equipment required of WD-40; cheap tooth-brush, paper towels (or tissues, or bum-fodder). Method: lightly brush head spray cleaner onto contacts. Gently but vigorously rub along the contacts with toothbrush. Paper-dry the contacts. Lightly spray WD-4...

In this case, it was similar to having the garbage dispose of itself... except for the kidnappees also taken and reprogrammed into psychopathy, as was done to the kidnapper when they were an infant.

Imagine a roadblock which is a wall of perfectly transparent AeroGel. Here you are, barrelling down a highway at the speed limit, when suddenly you realise that you have come to a halt, so gently that you weren’t aware of as much as having slowed down. Viola! You now have some idea of what is like to have been Gaslighted for over 5000 days by a person who is an emotional vampire: their goal is not to kill you, it’s to keep sucking away your self in order to present a façade of having a self themselves. If you have been “told,” tens of thousands of times in indirect ways ( never directly: you only become aware of an increasing number of knives accumulating in your back over a span of time), that you cannot succeed, that establishes just such an emotional roadblock. Right now, teaching a Raspberry Pi to sing is not happening. I know what needs to be done. The resources to discover exactly how to do it are freely available. It simply does not happen. Welcome to the AeroGel ...

Would a book entitled “I married a Psychopath” or the like sell well? One of the risks here for even a strong Empath is that there are no “red flags” in the differences between feelings and expression of them (body-language etc), for the very simple reason that there are no feelings , so there are no differences to sense. It must be a lonely, empty life for someone who consists only of an empty bubble of Ego. Yet they are the only person who could change that. It begins with genuine humility (which has nothing to do with acting humble). They need to think nothing of themselves. This may not sound so difficult until you understand that they think everything of themselves, full time. Religion (including Atheism) is not possible for them, as the only person they worship is themselves.

Today, as I walked into a grocery store, I spotted a person whom I know (call them ‘Pan’ as a suitable acronym/handle) at the other end of an aisle. They were dressed in a “power” colour and black, were (as always) so wrapped up in themselves that they were oblivious to everything outside their circle of interest, and were dominating a conversation with an older couple. The husband was significantly taller than Pan, the wife significantly shorter. Pan hadn’t needed to assume an overbearing posture or anything like that, however the couple were reacting to Pan’s controlling actions as if they were puppets. The only important thing in the Universe to them at that that instant was obviously Pan. This fits the character: to Pan, other people are only important in their appointed rôle (always, of which rôle they are completely unaware) of making Pan look good. That is all . One of the (many) contradictions in Pan’s life is that they literally don’t care about others at all , other...

A cowboy named Billy was overseeing his herd in a pasture in remote countryside one day, when suddenly a brand-new BMW drove towards him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out of the window and asked the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?” Billy looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?” The yuppie switches his car off, whips out his Dell® notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® phone, calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location, surfs to a NASA web page, where he feeds the location to another satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany … within seconds, he...

When you have a use for 4kV at up to 300mA, some of the microwave ovens so often discarded in solid-waste collection runs include these. Driving the primary of a Tesla coil through a spark-gap (or maybe an IGBT-based switch) with one of these would lead to a really fancy-looking electric fence (modulate the pulses to make the fence play Orpheus In The Underworld, or perhaps add a MIDI interface?) which would be absolute death to any near-by electronic devices (iPhone becomes iFried or maybe even iPhirework?) however would also make a clearly visible security boundary...

If you happen to be totally self-righteous and inwardly terrified that others might realise this and scorn you to oblivion, there is a very simple step you can take: realise that you’re not even fooling yourself, that we all make mistakes, that the huge mega-dose of shame you’re accumulating for yourself will be unbearable when it hits, and begin apologising. What? Yes, you really are a legend in your own mind. Only. Apologise to yourself for never having had the integrity to confront this and begin dealing with it. Then pick out, identify, and apologise to yourself for each and every failing in your life. On each such occasion, forgive yourself for that flaw. This may take some time. With that well underway, apologise to others. It can be a minor thing, to someone you barely know: it’s important to start somewhere. Eventually, your life can be worth something. By building up your integrity, you’re approaching a time when the world is not so terrifying. Your ultimate goal may...

This morning, I saw that old truism in action: “Avarice is the root of all kinds of evil.” As I drove by the ANZAC park, just before the new(ish) Entertainment Centre here, I drove past a pigeon (one of several) who had been unfortunate enough to fail in a space dispute with two tonnes of moving metal... and a Silver Gull which had been so intent on eating its part (as much as possible) of the unfortunate pigeon (a gull will eat anything which gives the appearance of having once been organic in nature, so this must have given it the appearance of a banquet) that it had also failed to notice a few tonnes of moving metal, and had actually become a new layer atop the pigeon. Feathers and all. So... be sure that your immediate goal is worth the risk before withdrawing your focus from the surrounding issues...

“Backup regularly” has just had a new win. Behold, a letter informing a creditor that there was no reason to believe that any of half a million dollars could be collected from a debtor who had gone through a mental breakdown etc. Behold, another letter thanking a mother-in-law for providing the final payments on a house initially bought with half a million dollars “mistakenly” paid into their own accounts by said debtor, as they had so directed. Oops! Yes, some of the paperwork has “mysteriously” disappeared from separately kept, ordered files. The banks are obliged to keep records for long enough that said disappearance will not be permanent. If you find yourself in a hole, the obvious next step is to stop digging . Evidently, they didn’t. Your sysadmin backing up often means that there are times when documents you have forged and forgotten to/been too careless or lazy to delete or overwrite by the time a backup happens may (have, in many cases) come back to haunt you. I a...

Ingredients: avconv, ImageMagick, some images, a LibreOffice Writer doc, tiMIDIty, some shell scripting, DeVeDe. Result: A video slideshow with neat fades from image to image & background music... zero ©opyright material involved anywhere. ImageMagick scales images to 720x480 (saved as PNG for losslessness). convert -gravity center -font "Sansation-Bold" -pointsize $PS \         -draw "fill white text 0,0 \"$(cat 1.txt)\"" \         transparent.png temporary-image-name .png Make lettering, convert -gravity center -font "Sansation-Bold" -pointsize $PS \         -strokewidth 5 -draw "fill black text 0,0 \"$(cat 1.txt)\"" \         -channel RGBA -blur 9x9 \         transparent.png temporary-image-name .png Make shadows behind lettering (for contrast). Blend all onto background image using composite ...

This will probably make it more difficult for Micro$oft to shamelessly swipe Android features fast enough to give the appearance of keeping up, as they evidently did prior to releasing Windows 8. Hmmm... that would be really worth my exploring in particular for one child for whom I could most definitely adjust software in order to simplify their reconciliation of an unconventional approach with the unreasonable demands of specific others who regard that approach as defective (& would write that false assumption into all of their interaction)... except that those same others would suspect me of altering the software to report location information on the device & all manner of other delusional rubbish which I have never had the will nor intention of ever doing. If I could deal with the others frankly, the message would be “The whole world does not think like you do. Your self-image may be staggeringly grandiose yet highly fragile, leading you to regard any lack of instant co...

OK, so I was a Lego® kid... Problem: a LibreOffice Writer document (pasted in from from a web page a while ago) has the original URL in every footnote link... which doesn’t make for such an enjoyable off-line reading experience after has been PDFed. If this was an MS-Word document?   “Raise hands in air, exit stage left, screaming...” However, we are dealing with Free/OpenSource Software here, so... fire up Konsole... cd Documents mkdir XYZZY cd XYZZY unzip ../original_document.odt vi content.xml :s_originalURLuptothehash__g ZZ zip ../new_document.odt $(find .) rm -rf XYZZY Done. The document new_document now has the URLs sans host & path ( http://www.frednurk.ufo/in/this/dir/filename.htm#65535 becomes #65535 ).

So... a DVD needed a prequel video by way of brief introduction... what to do? The basic problem solving process is to break a problem down & solve each smaller piece separately, so... Using GIMP , annotate a brief set of explicatory slides. Using Imagination , turn those slides into a silent video clip. Using Audacity , record a narration while the slideshow video clip is playing. Select a no-speaking part of that recording, axe all of the noise. Using tiMIDIty , fabricate some gentle classic background music. Using SoX , fade the music in, blend it with the narration, fade it out at the end. Using avconv (part of libav ), tack the resulting sound-stream onto the silent video clip. Using DeVeDe , morph that & the main video clips into a standard video DVD. Every single byte of that is FOSS . Total cost of entire production: $0. Some selfish sucker will find a way to botch this system. It works too well for the Pagan god Murphy to avoid interfering with.